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December 1, 2009
The First Jobs of 10 Wealthy Entrepreneurs
via MintLife Blog | Personal Finance News & Advice by Joshua Ritchie on 12/1/09
There’s a stereotype in America that successful CEOs and entrepreneurs were born with silver spoons in their mouths. Their eye-popping fortunes were little more than a gift from luck, genetics or privilege. Given this stereotype, it’s tough to imagine people like Warren Buffett ever working “regular jobs” like the rest of us. However, you may be surprised to learn that many titans of industry got their start in very pedestrian positions that you wouldn’t suspect. Today, we look back on the first jobs of 10 wealthy CEOs and entrepreneurs.
Ross Perot
(Leia)
Respected worldwide as one of the most effective business leaders of the 20th century, Ross Perot got his working start earlier than anyone on this list. As CNN tells it, Perot’s father was “…a cotton broker and a part time horse trader who put his young son to work at the age of six breaking horses for a dollar or two apiece.” (The elder Perot also notes that “”Perot’s nose still shows the results of the falls he took.)” Once he was older, Perot enlisted in the US Navy in 1949 and helped to establish its honor system, and by 1953, he was president of his battalion. So began a life of leadership that would see him create and sell-off two very successful, independent companies (Electronic Data Systems and Perot Systems) for billions each.
Wayne Huizenga
Before becoming a waste management magnate, owning the NFL’s Miami Dolphins or MLB’s Florida Marlins, Wayne Huizenga got early work experience as a gas station attendant during high school, according to Forbes. Reportedly, Huizenga also took a truck driving position at 17 to help his mother with household bills following her traumatic divorce from his father. Huizenga later enlisted in the Army reserve in 1959. By 1960, Huizenga was already buying his own truck and recruiting clients for the fledgling waste management company that would build most of his $300+ million net worth.
Warren Buffett
Investing mogul Warren Buffett’s first job reads like something out of a novel. Long before he made history with his shrewd and old-fashioned-style investment decisions, the Nebraska native earned his first “working capital” as a newspaper delivery boy. According to WorkingWorld.com, Buffett was already, at age 13, “…savvy enough to deduct the cost of his bicycle on his first tax return.” So began a path of frugality for Buffett that saw him amass over $140,000 by age 26 (in 1956), who would eventually became one of the richest men in the world at present.
Donald Trump
Commercial real estate tycoon Donald Trump got his hands dirty (literally) for his first working capital. According Forbes, Trump accompanied his father to job sites and collected empty cans and bottles with his brother for the redemption value. It didn’t add up to much (Trump recalls it equaling a “below-average allowance”) but it no doubt taught him the value of a dollar. Humorously, Trump also notes that he later accompanied dad on rent collection jobs to scoop up bottles and cans that way, but quickly learned to, “…stand out of the doorway to avoid the possibility of being shot”.
Sam Walton
(Gattis)
If ever an entrepreneur rose up from humble beginnings, it was Sam Walton. The Walmart founder began helping his family make ends meet at an early age, and held many odd jobs. Among these were milking the family cows, bottling the milk and hand-delivering it to paying customers. Later, Walton would take to his bike to complete a daily paper delivery route. He also sold magazine subscriptions on the side, perhaps building some early sales skills that proved crucial later on. Upon graduating high school, Walton was voted “most versatile boy” in his class. Walton continued working odd jobs early in college, including “…waiting tables in exchange for meals”, according to Wikipedia.
Jim Clark
Netscape founder and maverick entrepreneur Jim Clark was anything but a “silver-spoon” case. Growing up in a poor single-parent household, Clark’s first job (after dropping out of high school) was his four years as a member of the US Navy. Michael Lewis’ book The New New Thing chronicles how disastrous this was for the young Clark, who constantly found himself at odds with authority. Like so many entrepreneurs, Clark simply could not defer to superiors for any serious length of time, and went on to found Silicon Graphics, Netscape, and Healtheon.
Larry Ellison
Much of Larry Ellison’s early life was marked by the perception that he would never amount to anything. Achievement.org refers to the future Oracle co-founder as a “…seemingly aimless young man” who dropped out of high school after his mother passed away. However, unbeknownst to Ellison’s father, the young boy had developed a stunning aptitude for math and science, which paved the way for his first job as a technician at Wells Fargo. His programming duties at Ampex even saw Ellison participating in “building the first IBM-compatible mainframe system”. From these beginnings, Ellison has risen to the point where, as Guy Kawasaki writes in Reality Check, “…Larry Ellison can keep the San Jose Airport open after-hours to accommodate the landing of his own personal jet”.
Michael Dell
(Joi)
Dell founder Michael Dell was hardly an instant business success. According to CareerBuilder, Dell got his working start as a dishwasher in a Chinese restaurant. His starting wage? A whopping total of $2.30 per hour. Dell also displayed some early sales prowess during his high school years, when, despite not excelling academically, he raked in $18,000 in Houston Post sales – enough to buy a car and three computer systems. Once in college Dell wasted little time starting his first business (PCs Limited) in a single room of a 27 story residence hall. Before long the young company showed enough promise to inspire Dell to drop out at 19, taking a loan from his grandmother and re-naming the business to Dell Computer.
Ray Kroc
Ray Kroc’s first job epitomizes humble beginnings. His first ever job, according to FAQs.org, was helping out at his uncle’s soda fountain the year before he began high school. Inc’s Great Leaders series also reports that Kroc “…lied about his age to land a job as a Red Cross ambulance driver during the First World War”, but the fighting ended before he could serve. Following the war, Kroc served in a veritable revolving door of temporary capacities, including “…a pianist, a grocery store bagger, and a paper cup salesman” before buying out the McDonald brothers for their rights to the iconic hamburger chain.
Herb Kelleher
Hailed by some as the greatest American CEO of all time, Southwest Airlines’ Herb Kelleher (middle) was hardly born into executive greatness. Rather, the humble New Jersey native got his first working experience from his six summers at Campbell Soup, working under his father (also the general manager) according to Charles Blackwell’s article “Flying High with Herb Kelleher: A Profile in Charismatic Leadership.” It was here that Kelleher learned and perfected his people-focused, contrarian (and often eccentric, as this video demonstrates) management style that has remained a fixture in business school curriculums for decades.
Awful Library Books
via Neatorama by Johnny Cat on 11/30/09
Mary and Holly are Michigan librarians who are really into “weeding,” meaning they strive to keep their books relevant and “weed” out dated, damaged, and just plain wrong titles. Recently featured on Jimmy Kimmel Live, the two bibliophiles created a submitter-based blog from library-goers all over.
These books are just odd, outdated or maybe should be reconsidered under a current interpretation of collection policies. In no way should the opinions of Mary and Holly be interpreted as a standard for every library. We just want to have a few chuckles and talk about library collections.
There are lots of curiosities besides the one I chose above. I really got a kick out of this one, as well as this one. All around, a fun site! Link.
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Obama: King of All Statists
via Big Government by Warner Todd Huston on 12/1/09
Almost 40% of William Howard Taft’s cabinet officials were from the private sector. Ike had nearly 60% of his appointees sporting private sector experience. Reagan had about 55% and George W. Bush about 53%. Even FDR and Truman saw half their cabinet officials coming to government with private sector experience.
And Obama?
Less than 10%.
That means that only about 7% of Barack Obama’s cabinet appointees ever worked in the private sector. So is it any wonder that Obama has become the president responsible for an unprecedented bloating of the federal government and a take over of power on a scale never before seen?
Nick Schulz published a great graph revealing the private sector experience of the appointees of every president since 1901.
Remembering that Barack Obama himself never held a real job his whole life the fact that he surrounds himself with government hacks, placemen, and hangerson, yet is expected to be The One to fix the economy and, well, we can see why he is failing so miserably. He has no life experiences to draw on and neither does anyone he’s asked to advise him on the matter.
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Rachel sez, "I just made these rings today, and think you might like them! They are handmade from sterling silver with black onyx "food points." As the saying goes, 'om nom nom!'
Yes, Rachel, I do like 'em! I like 'em a lot!
Pacman Ring Series- Sterling Silver and Black Onyx (Thanks, Rachel!)
Racist driving book written by Balloon Boy dad
via Boing Boing by Lisa Katayama on 11/30/09
Richard Alan Heene, best known for orchestrating the Balloon Boy hoax in October, once wrote a really bad supposed-to-be-funny book called The Official Offensive Driving Handbook. It includes racial stereotypes illustrated by exaggerated photos of buck-toothed "Orientals," turbaned "Towelheads," and "Bros" in Cadillacs. The book appears to be no longer in stock on Amazon. Balloon Boy's dad — not smart, not funny [TMZ] Previously:
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Vodka Soon Available in Pill Form
via Neatorama by John Farrier on 12/1/09
A researcher at a Russian university has developed a powdered form of alcohol that will soon make the consumption of vodka more convenient. From The Times of India:
Russian professor Evgeny Moskalev of Saint Petersburg Technological University has evolved a technique that allows turning alcohol into powder and packing it in pills. The new technique can solidify any kind of alcohol, including whisky, cognac, wine and beer. The new technique can solidify any kind of alcohol, including whisky, cognac, wine and beer.
“Dry” vodka can be wrapped in paper and carried around in a pocket or a bag. Vodka in form of a pill would come handy at parties when “consumers” would be able to calculate their exact required dosage.
Verily, we live in an age of medical wonders.
Link via Geekologie | Image: US Department of State (not the pills in question)
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Secret CIA Manual Shows Magic Tricks Used By Spies [Top Secret]
via Gizmodo by Wilson Rothman on 12/1/09
During the Cold War, the CIA hired a master magician to teach them deceptive maneuvers. Here are a handful of tricks, recovered from a super secret manual the government thought it had destroyed over 30 years ago.Our spooky spy friends Bob Wallace and Keith Melton—the guys behind the amazing spy-gadget bible Spycraft— uncovered one of the supposedly incinerated "magic" journals. Their new book, The Official CIA Manual of Trickery and Deception, is in part a verbatim reproduction of that manual, but, thrillingly, it also shares the (declassified) history of CIA trickery from the beginning, including the formation of the double top-secret and sometimes sinister MKULTRA division. MKULTRA was supposed to have been erased from history in 1973, but—in true spy fashion—the few shreds of paperwork that remained ended up telling its whole story.
The discovered manual was penned by John Mulholland, the David Copperfield and/or Blaine of his day. Though Mulholland knew more than anybody since Houdini about pulling fast ones, his challenge was to teach people who were not necessarily pros to pull off tricks in front of an audience that didn't know it was an audience. Perform a lousy trick, and you don't get booed—you get beheaded.
Here Wallace and Melton have kindly shared some newly created illustrations of tricks from the book, CIA sleights you could employ to escape from a water-bottling plant, poison a friend, send messages with your shoelaces, steal single sheets of paper, look dumb, and of course, kill Castro. Not all of the tricks below come from Mulholland's original manual, but they were all devised at Langley, and are all lovingly described in the book—a $16 thrill of a read for anyone with even a passing interest in spyology:
Thanks to Bob Wallace and Keith Melton for sharing their book's illustrations with us. If you'd like to know more about the book, check out its sales page on Amazon (there's a Kindle version too), or visit the authors' new website, CIA Magic.
Fw: copyright violation
From: Darren Rowse <darrenrowse@gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 2 Dec 2009 10:41:50 +1100
To: tank<tank@realthinktank.com>
Subject: copyright violation
Please remove this post and any others from DPS from your blog - you've taken it without permission and in doing so break our copyright.http://www.realthinktank.com/2009/11/25-spectacular-light-painting-images.html
You're welcome to use quotes form our content but not repulish posts in full - particularly if you're hotlinking our images which costs us bandwidtch
Darren Rowse
PS if ANYONE would like to take any of my content and post it please do! Thanks!
Javy the Soundman get's angry!
Subject: 545 vs 300,000,000---THIS IS ONE OF THE BEST...
Amen!!!
Don't be afraid to fwd to your Senators and Reps.Rerun but read it again!
545 vs 300,000,000
EVERY CITIZEN NEEDS TO READ THIS AND THINK ABOUT WHAT THIS JOURNALIST HAS SCRIPTED IN THIS MESSAGE. READ IT AND THEN REALLY THINK ABOUT OUR CURRENT POLITICAL DEBACLE. Charley Reesehas been a journalist for 49 years.
545 PEOPLE
By Charlie Reese Politicians are the only people in the world who create problems and then campaign against them. Have you ever wondered, if both the Democrats and the Republicans are against deficits, WHY do we have deficits? Have you ever wondered, if all the politicians are against inflation and high taxes, WHY do we have inflation and high taxes? You and I don't propose a federal budget. The president does. You and I don't have the Constitutional authority to vote on appropriations. The House of Representativesdoes. You and I don't write the tax code, Congress does. You and I don't set fiscal policy, Congress does. You and I don't control monetary policy, the Federal Reserve Bank does. One hundred senators, 435 congressmen, one president, and nine Supreme Court justices equates to 545 human beings out of the 300 million are directly, legally, morally, and individually responsible for the domestic problems that plague this country. I excluded the members of the Federal Reserve Board because that problem was created by the Congress. In 1913, Congress delegated its Constitutional duty to provide a sound currency to a federally chartered, but private, central bank. I excluded all the special interests and lobbyists for a sound reason.. They have no legal authority. They have no ability to coerce a senator, a congressman, or a president to do one cotton-picking thing. I don't care if they offer a politician $1 million dollars in cash. The politician has the power to accept or reject it. No matter what the lobbyist promises, it is the legislator's responsibility to determine how he votes. Those 545 human beings spend much of their energy convincing you that what they did is not their fault. They cooperate in this common con regardless of party.
What separates a politician from a normal human being is an excessive amount of gall. No normal human being would have the gall of a Speaker, who stood up and criticized the President for creating deficits.. The president can only propose a budget. He cannot force the Congress to accept it. TheConstitution, which is the supreme law of the land, gives sole responsibility to the House of Representatives for originating and approving appropriations and taxes. Who is the speaker of the House? Nancy Pelosi. She is the leader of the majority party. She and fellow House members, not the president, can approve any budget they want. If the president vetoes it, they can pass it over his veto if they agree to. It seems inconceivable to me that a nation of 300 million can not replace 545 people who stand convicted -- by present facts -- of incompetence and irresponsibility. I can't think of a single domestic problem that is not traceable directly to those 545 people. When you fully grasp the plain truth that 545 people exercise the power of the federal government, then it must follow that what exists is what they want to exist. If the tax code is unfair, it's because they want it unfair. If the budget is in the red, it's because they want it in the red .. If the Army &Marines are in IRAQ , it's because they want them in IRAQ If they do not receive social security but are on an elite retirement plan not available to the people, it's because they want it that way. There are no insoluble government problems. Do not let these 545 people shift the blame to bureaucrats, whom they hire and whose jobs they can abolish; to lobbyists, whose gifts and advice they can reject; to regulators, to whom they give the power to regulate and from whom they can take this power. Above all, do not let them con you into the belief that there exists disembodied mystical forces like "the economy," "inflation," or "politics" that prevent them from doing what they take an oath to do. Those 545 people, and they alone, are responsible. They, and they alone, have the power. They, and they alone, should be held accountable by the people who are their bosses. Provided the voters have the gumption to manage their own employees. We should vote all of them out of office and clean up their mess! Charlie Reese is a former columnist of theOrlando Sentinel Newspaper. What you do with this article now that you have read it.......... Is up to you.
This might be funny if it weren't so darned true.
Be sure to read all the way to the end:
Tax his land,
Tax his bed,
Tax the table
At which he's fed.
Tax his tractor,
Tax his mule,
Teach him taxes
Are the rule.
Tax his work,
Tax his pay,
He works for peanuts
Anyway!
Tax his cow,
Tax his goat,
Tax his pants,
Tax his coat.
Tax his ties,
Tax his shirt,
Tax his work,
Tax his dirt.
Tax his tobacco,
Tax his drink,
Tax him if he
Tries to think.
Tax his cigars,
Tax his beers,
If he cries
Tax his tears.
Tax his car,
Tax his gas,
Find other ways
To tax his ass.
Tax all he has
Then let him know
That you won't be done
Till he has no dough.
When he screams and hollers;
Then tax him some more,
Tax him till
He's good and sore.
Then tax his coffin,
Tax his grave,
Tax the sod in
Which he's laid.
Put these words
Upon his tomb,
Taxes drove me
to my doom...'
When he's gone,
Do not relax,
Its time to apply
Theinheritance tax.
Accounts Receivable Tax
Building Permit Tax
CDL license Tax
Cigarette Tax
Corporate Income Tax
Dog License Tax
Excise Taxes
Federal Income Tax
Federal Unemployment Tax (FUTA)
Fishing License Tax
Food License Tax
Fuel Permit Tax
Gasoline Tax (currently 44.75 cents per gallon)
Gross Receipts Tax
Hunting License Tax
Inheritance Tax
Inventory Tax
IRS Interest Charges IRS Penalties (tax on top of tax)
Liquor Tax
Luxury Taxes
Marriage License Tax
Medicare Tax
Personal Property Tax
Property Tax
Real Estate Tax
Service Charge T ax
Social Security Tax
Road Usage Tax
Sales Tax
Recreational Vehicle Tax
School Tax
State Income Tax
State Unemployment Tax (SUTA)
Telephone Federal Excise Tax
Telephone Federal Universal Ser vice FeeTax
Telephone Federal, State and Local Surcharge Taxes
Telephone Minimum Usage Surcharge Tax
Telephone Recurring and Non-recurring Charges Tax
Telephone State and Local Tax
Telephone Usage Charge Tax
Utility Taxes
Vehicle License Registration Tax
Vehicle Sales Tax
Watercraft Registration Tax
Well Permit Tax
Workers Compensation Tax
STILL THINK THIS IS FUNNY?Not one of these taxes existed 100 years ago, and our nation was the most prosperous in the world. We had absolutely no national debt, had the largest middle class in the world, and Mom stayed home to raise the kids.
What in the hell happened? Can you spell 'politicians?'
And I still have to 'press 1' for English!?
I hope this goes around THE USA at least 100 times!!! YOU can help it get there!!!
GO AHEAD - - - BE AN AMERICAN!!!
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